Unlike the other nations conquered by the Nazis, a Polish collaborators government was never established. Instead, part of Poland was immediately annexed to Germany, with the remainder set up as a German-run state. In addition, the Nazis targeted any Poles that were seen as intellectuals, potential rebels, etc. that might seek an eventual restoration of Poland.
The government of Poland was forced to flee to England where their surviving forces fought with the allies. These exiles also helped to bring the atrocities of Hitlerâs concentration camps to the worldâs attention.
As a result, Poland is very sensitive to accusations that all Poles were anti-Semitic and willfully supported the Nazis since, except for the free Poles, they ceased to exist as a nation during World War II.
Unfortunately, Netanyahuâs government might actually be fueling anti-semitism in Poland because they are perceived as trivializing Polandâs suffering during the war - and they are emboldening Polandâs far-right to whitewash the fact that, at the individual level, there were Poles that collaborated with the Nazis.
If youâre willing to throw a group under the bus to maintain or expand your power, then you donât like that group as much other groups youâre not willing to throw under a bus.
Itâs really rather startling to me how often the two get conflated. Even the rightwing crazies in the US arenât lovers of the Jews of the world; they just want to support Israel for their coming Rapture.
Being an atheist Jew, I run into comments with some regularity, asking me what I think about something that Israel has done, blah blah. I canât seem to make ppl understand that has as much relevance to my life as something Bulgaria or Thailand might have done last week.
No we donât agree. The Holocaust was the entire reason Israel was finally recreated. Also, Israel is routinely demonized for things the Arab world is actually doing, such as ethnic cleansing. No, the Palestinians are not being ethnically cleansed by Israel since the Palestinian populations only increase. The Jewish populations of Middle Eastern countries, however, have all but disappeared due to attacks, expulsions and official apartheid laws.
Because itâs been conclusively proven that Israel can do whatever they want, and Big Daddy Uncle Sam will continue to supply money and weapons to them from now to til the end of time?
So itâs OK for Israel to practice unofficial apartheid? (And given the way the Israeli legal system acts when it comes to settlers and Palestinians, itâs all but official.) Look, I have no truck with the authoritarian and misogynistic regimes that run much of the Middle East. But that doesnât absolve Israel of its terrible treatment of the Palestinians and its illegal occupation of the West Bank. Iâm âpro-Israelâ in the sense of supporting a two-state solution drawn along the 1967 borders, but Israelâs âfacts-on-the-groundâ approach for the past several decades has made that nearly impossible now. Instead it has chosen to pursue the path of becoming the new South Africa.
Poles âcollaborated with the Nazisâ and âsucked anti-Semitism with their mothersâ milk.
In all seriousness, is Russia that effective in getting idiots in positions of power, or has the stupid just coincidentally gone all over the world at once?
I mean, I know we have had dumbasses in positions of power throughout history, but the percentages seems to have ticked up a lot recently.
Poland still has a lot of anti-semitism, here in Denmark we had an influx of Jewish refugees in the sixties from the Communist regime (I have worked together with people from that background).
Indeed, it would seem that in the still newer history of World War II, all European countries were valiantly fighting the Nazis, not a collaborator to be found anywhere, and all went to superhuman lengths to save Jews because antisemitism was always and completely rejected.
Is there not a Polish version of âOrdinary Men,â by Christopher Browning?
